Miss Jung, step away from the desk. The debit card, the petty cash, the explorer. >> I knew this day was coming, and I'll tell you right now, I'd make the same choices again. >> This is Kathy Jung, the president of a nonprofit animal shelter that took in $10 million from donors who trusted her. She operated without oversight for years, and not one person on the board ever checked what she had done before. >> 148,000 on that card. The chair she was sitting in at the head of a boardroom full of donors and volunteer dog walkers would not be hers by the end of the month. Within days, she would resign the presidency of the Nevada Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Within weeks, the entire board would resign with her. And within 4 years, the Nevada Attorney General would stand in a Las Vegas courtroom and read out the terms of her guilty plea. 63 old felony counts, three new ones, then two, then one misdemeanor, $3,000 in restitution, 25 hours of community service, and one donated Ford Explorer sold from underneath a charity for homeless animals that told the entire story. Before we go any further, I have to ask, have you ever written a check to a charity because of the face on the pamphlet or the voice you heard on the local news? Drop that answer in the comments and tell me if you ever thought to look at their books. If you're new here, subscribe. This channel goes places the local coverage stops. Kathleen Trisha Pullman was born in Reno, Nevada in the summer of 1974. Her father drove a beer distributor route out of Sparks. Her mother kept the books for a family-owned tile and grout business off Rock Boulevard. Kathy grew up in a singlestory ranch on Elco Avenue, walking distance from Vaughn Middle School in a neighborhood where the driveways held work trucks and the yards held retired greyhounds behind chain link. Neighbors would later describe her as the girl who brought home strays, a cat with a torn ear at 10, a lab mix with one eye at 13, a rabbit her mother finally let her keep in a hutch behind the garage. Her yearbook at Reno High listed two activities and only two math club and the volunteer program at the Nevada Humane Society where she cleaned kennels every Saturday for four straight years. She took her associates degree in accounting from Truckucky Meadows Community College in 1994. She was 20 years old. Her first bookkeeping job paid $9 an hour at a small engineering firm off Kitsky Lane, running accounts payable out of a supply closet with a laminated schedule of federal holidays taped to the wall. She moved to Las Vegas in 1996 for a controller track position at a small fleet management company on West Sunset Road. She married Douglas Jung in 1999. She kept his last name after the divorce 2 years later. By 2002, she had climbed to controller at the Las Vegas division of budget rental a car and sales, running general ledger for a company that grossed tens of millions of dollars a year in rentals and used vehicle sales off the strip. Her performance reviews called her in the exact language detailoriented, self-directed, and the kind of employee who does not need to be managed. That last line written by her direct supervisor in the fall of 2003 would read almost like a warning in hindsight because in 2004 Kathy Jung was arrested and charged with 63 counts of felony theft. Prosecutors alleged she had spent the previous 2 years converting budget company checks into cashier checks, using them to pay her personal credit cards, her personal loans, her mortgage, and at one point buying herself a car. 63 counts. Her attorney negotiated the plea down. In 2005, she pleaded guilty to a single lesser charge in exchange for a suspended jail sentence, 3 years probation, and $285,000 in restitution to budget rent a car. She paid the restitution on schedule. She completed her probation on schedule. And when it was all behind her, she rebuilt her life in the only industry that had ever really made sense to her. She went back to the shelters. She started volunteering weekends at a small Nokill in Henderson, then took a part-time bookkeeping contract with a midsized rescue foundation. By 2009, she was on staff at the Nevada Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. By 2012, she was the executive director. By 2014, she was the president. And in nine years at that organization across three separate board rotations, she never once disclosed the 2004 case. Not on an application, not in an interview, not in a background section of a grant she signed. The people who handed her the checkbook of a beloved animal charity did not know she had already been convicted of stealing from one employer's checkbook. They did not ask. She did not tell. The Nevada SPCA sat on a scrubbed flat parcel on Dwey Drive, tucked between Decatur Boulevard and Russell Road on the industrial edge of the West Las Vegas Valley. From the road, it was a run of low tan buildings with chainlink runs, a gravel lot, and a handpainted sign of a cartoon golden retriever holding a heart. Inside, at any given moment, the shelter housed between 200 and 300 dogs, cats, rabbits, and the occasional confiscated exotic bird. It was one of the largest nokill shelters in the state. Its tax filings ran into the millions. Between 2013 and 2017, over the span of five fiscal years, the NSPCA took in roughly $10.3 million in public support, donations from Las Vegas retirees, estate gifts from women who had left their entire life savings to the animals, bequests from divorces and terminal diagnosis, coin jars from elementary school fundraisers, casino employee giving campaigns, corporate matching grants, On paper, the money was governed by a standard nonprofit structure, a volunteer board of directors, an operating account at a Nevada credit union that required an invoice and two signatures for any check over a threshold, a petty cash account with a rolling balance meant for small daily needs. a debit card issued to the president for approved operational purchases, an independent annual review, a treasurer who was supposed to look at monthly bank statements. That was the design. The reality was that the president signed nearly everything. She signed the checks she wrote. She endorsed the checks she deposited. She reconciled the accounts she was supposed to be checked against. The board met four times a year. The treasurer position for long stretches sat vacant or was filled by a board member with no accounting background. The audit was a compilation, not a full audit. And the president was Kathy Jung. And Kathy Jung had a decade old felony indictment in her past that not one person in that room knew about. Meanwhile, the physical shelter was falling apart. The roof over the catwing leaked in three places by 2016. The rear kennel building had a rodent infestation the staff could not keep ahead of. A sewage line in the isolation ward had cracked and been temporarily solved by running rubber hoses across the concrete floor from one drain to another. Volunteers stopped bringing their kids to weekend cleanups. And through all of it, the president stood at podiums and in local news studios and on donor call lists asking the public for money to build a brand new facility. A new shelter had been promised. For years, it was never built. The first suspicious charge in the paper record surfaced in 2016. A $400 debit purchase at Pier 1 Imports on West Sahara Avenue coded as office supplies. No invoice was attached. No board member ever asked. By 2017, the pattern was steady. By 2018, it was industrial. That single year on the NSPCA operating account debit card, Kathy Jung spent more than $148,000. Not on kibble, not on veterinary supplies, not on kennel repair. Investigators would later itemize the retailers by name in a filed complaint. The PGA Superstore, Pier 1, Cost Plus World Market, Michael Kors, Ulta Beauty, Sketchers, all from the account that was supposed to demand an invoice and a second signature. No invoices were attached. No second signatures appeared. The petty cash account in that same year of 2018 showed $14,300 in checks written out to cash. Every single check was signed by Kathy Jung. Every single check was endorsed on the back by Kathy Jung. Not one had a receipt attached to it. Not one had a memo line. Not one had a corresponding entry in a spending log. The travel and entertainment line item on the internal budget, an ordinary category on almost any nonprofit's books, told its own quiet story. In 2017, it had run about $800 for the entire year. In 2018, it ran over 26,000, an increase of more than 3,000% from one year to the next. Meals, airfare, hotels, a steakhouse on West Charleston, room service in San Diego, golf lessons. There was a boyfriend. His name was Scott Reber. He worked at a car dealership on the north end of the Las Vegas Valley called the Desert 215 Supertore. Records that investigators would eventually pull from the NSPCA operating account showed that between 2017 and early 2019, Kathy Jung wrote more than $52,000 in checks to Scott Reber. Every check was signed by her. Almost no check had a second signature. Not one had a matching invoice for services rendered. The memo lines were blank or they said things like consulting or they said nothing at all. And then there was the Ford Explorer. It was a 2000 model blue donated to the shelter years earlier by a widow whose late husband had rebuilt the engine himself. It had a set of nonprofit magnetic decals on the doors and a rear window that read adopt don't shop in a heart-shaped decal. It was by any legal definition a vehicle owned by the Nevada Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a federally recognized nonprofit charity. Sometime between February 17th, 2017 and January 6th, 2019, Kathy Jung sold that Ford Explorer and she kept the money. In November of 2018, the phone rang inside the KTNV Channel 13 newsroom on South Valley View Boulevard. The caller was a former volunteer at the Nevada SPCA. She was in tears. She said the animals were suffering. She said the roof was leaking. She said the sewage was running through the kennels. She said the president was buying handbags. She wanted someone to look. The reporter who took that call was Darcy Spears, chief investigator for the station's 13 Investigates unit. Spears had covered corruption in the Las Vegas Valley for over a decade. She started with a public records request for the NSPCA's tax filings, then a second request, then a walk-in visit to the shelter unannounced. The story that KTNV broke in November 2018 documented the physical condition of the shelter in devastating detail. Photographs of the leaking roof. Photographs of the sewage hoses. Photographs of the kennels that had not been repaired despite years of promised renovations. Interviews with volunteers who had quit in frustration. Interviews with donors who wanted to know where their money had gone. Kathy Jung sat for one on camera interview. She said the money was being spent responsibly. She said the shelter was doing everything it could with the resources it had. She said a new facility was coming. By the time the story aired, the reporting had done what internal audits had failed to do for years. It had put the numbers in front of the public. It had put the images of the animals in front of the public, and it had put a name and a face on the woman running the organization. In March of 2019, a Las Vegas attorney named Tina Walls, who at that point was a sitting member of the NPCA board walked into the Nevada Attorney General's office and filed a formal complaint. Walls alleged that Kathy Jung had been spending shelter funds for personal use. She asked the state to investigate. The state agreed to look. That single filing turned the KTNV story into a criminal case. Within 30 days, Kathy Jung had resigned the presidency of the Nevada Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Within 60, the entire board had resigned with her. Shelter operations were temporarily handed over to a national nonprofit called the Humane Network so the animals would not be left without care. The investigators assigned to the case did not have to build the paper trail. Kathy Jung had already built it herself, one signature and one debit swipe at a time for years. The Nevada Attorney General's office subpoenaed the credit union records for the operating account. They subpoenaed the credit union records for the petty cash account. They subpoenaed statements for the president's debit card. They pulled her personal bank statements. They cross referenced the two. where the NSPCA card had rung up a purchase at Michael Kors, they matched it to a period when Kathy Jung's personal card had gone quiet. Where the NSPCA card had bought golf equipment at the PGA Superstore, they matched it to social media photographs of Kathy Jung and Scott Reber at a country club. They found the checks written out to cash, $14,300 of them in a single year, all in her handwriting, all endorsed by her. All with no supporting paperwork. They found the checks written to Scott Reber, $52,000 and change over roughly two years. Every check signed by Kathleen Jung. Not one counter signed by a treasurer. Not one attached to an invoice for services performed. Not one memo line consistent with a documented arrangement between the shelter and any outside vendor. They traced the Ford Explorer. The title was still on paper in the name of the Nevada Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Except it was not. It had been signed over. Investigators pulled the Nevada DMV records and found the transfer. They found the buyer. They found the sale price. They followed the money. The money had not been deposited into any shelter account. It had gone in cash into the pocket of the woman whose signature had transferred the title. And then they found the 2004 case. They pulled Kathy Jung's Clark County criminal history and there it was. 63 felony counts, budget rent a car and sales, $285,000 in restitution. A plea in 2005 to a lesser charge, a completed probation. The board's application file for the NPCA presidency had no mention of any of it. The grant application she had signed on the shelter's behalf, several of which specifically asked whether any organization officer had a prior conviction had all been answered no. Quick question before we head into the courtroom. Do you think a plea deal that ends with $3,000 in restitution matches what you've heard so far? Yes or no in the comments. If you appreciate this kind of coverage, subscribe. We do this every week, and we don't look away from the small numbers at the end. The confrontation, when it finally came, did not happen at gunpoint or in handcuffs. It happened across a conference room table in a state office building in downtown Las Vegas with a court reporter, two deputy attorneys general, and a defense lawyer at Kathy Jung's right elbow. The recorded interview, portions of which were later summarized in filings, opened the way these things usually do. The investigators walked her through the operating account. They walked her through the petty cash. They walked her through the debit card line by line, charge by charge. Ma'am, this is a debit purchase for $1,142 at the Michael Kors store on the strip in April of 2018. That is the shelter's operating account. Was that a business expense? I don't recall the specific charge. There are 31 charges at Michael Kors on this account across 2018 alone. Do you recall any of them being business expenses? I would have to look at my records. This is a check for $800, made out to cash, signed by you, endorsed by you, dated June 4th, 2018. What was that for? Cash for operational needs. What operational needs? I would have to look at my records. Ma'am, did you ever tell the board of directors of the Nevada SPCA about your 2004 arrest for felony theft from budget rent a car? Her lawyer leaned in. The interview stopped shortly after. Kathy Jung invoked her right not to answer. The record notes it. She said in the end exactly what a person says when the ground gives way beneath them. She said she wanted her attorney to handle it from here. In March of 2021, Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford's office filed the first set of criminal charges, three felony counts of theft, each alleging she had stolen between 650 and $3,500 from the Nevada Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The complaint was filed, the paperwork was public, and then the case sat. Those three original felony counts were quietly dropped for reasons the Attorney General's office has never publicly explained. The refiling came almost 2 years later. On February 2nd, 2023, the Nevada Attorney General's Office filed a fresh criminal complaint against Kathleen T. Young. Two felony counts of theft. Count one specifically alleged that between February 17th, 2017 and January 6th, 2019, Jung had sold the 2004 Ford Explorer belonging to the nonprofit, and kept the proceeds. Count two alleged that Jung had used the NSPCA debit card for personal use at the Desert 215 Superstore, the car dealership where her boyfriend worked. The case was set for trial, and then, as most cases in most courtrooms do, it settled instead. On September 13th, 2023, in a Las Vegas Justice Court hearing room with almost no one in the gallery, Kathy Jung entered a plea of no contest to an amended charge of misdemeanor petty larseny. The second count was dropped as part of the plea deal. Deputy Attorney General Jason Margolus read the terms of the agreement into the record. The judge formally found her guilty. No jail time, no probation past the community service requirement. $3,000 in restitution to the Nevada Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. 25 hours of community service to be completed within 2 weeks. Her attorney told the court she would pay the restitution in full and finish the service on schedule, and that was the end of it. The oddity in the outcome was one that the attorney general's own office acknowledged out loud after the fact. $3,000 in restitution is under Nevada law a figure that describes a felony theft. It does not describe a misdemeanor. A spokesman for the office told the local press that the initial monetary loss set the felony charge, but that the charge could change through negotiation and that the goal of the office was first to make the organization whole and second to secure some consequence. Some consequence. That was the phrase. The restitution matched a felony. The punishment did not. The Nevada Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals still exists. It operates on a much smaller footprint now. The Dewey Drive facility with its leaking roof and its rodent infestation and its sewage hoses running across concrete floors was quietly given up. The new shelter that had been promised for years, the one that donors had written checks toward and grandmothers had left in their wills, was never built by Kathy Jung's organization. It never got past the artist rendering. The public support that had flowed in during her presidency in the $10 million in change that arrived between 2013 and 2017 alone is money that will never be traced dollar for dollar. Board members who resigned in 2019 have never sat on another nonprofit board. Tina Walls, the board member who filed the complaint with the attorney general, moved on to other legal work in the Las Vegas Valley. Darcy Spears is still the chief investigator at KTNV Channel 13 News. Scott Reber, the boyfriend, was never charged with anything in the matter and appears in no criminal filing except as the name on the memo line of checks that should never have been written. The animals that lived at the Nevada SPCA between 2013 and 2019, the ones whose photos had been on the mailers, the ones whose names had been in the newsletters, the ones whose faces had convinced Las Vegas grandmothers to reach for the checkbook one more time, are almost all gone now by the ordinary math of dog years and cat years and time. What sits in the public record instead is the paper trail. 148,000 at Michael Kors and Ulta and the PGA store. 14,300 to cash. 52,000 to the boyfriend. One Ford Explorer with an adopt don't shop decal on the back window signed over, sold off and pocketed. And at the bottom of it, $3,000 in restitution and 25 hours of community service. some consequence. That was what they called it. This case was disturbing in a quiet, bureaucratic way that stays with you. But the case on your screen right now is louder, uglier, and impossible to look away from. Click it.